Page 510 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

THE TAINOS: PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS OF

COLUMBUS' INDIES

Irving Rouse
Jose Juan Arrom

A A>.fter a thirty-three-day crossing from the of them with red, and some of them with encounter, Columbus allowed himself to think

Canary Islands, Christopher Columbus' small whatever they find They do not carry ahead to the Tamos' possible utility to the crown
fleet sighted land two hours after midnight on arms nor are they acquainted with them, and thereby, as we shall see, sealed their fate:
Thursday 12 October 1492. Following the coast because I showed them swords and they took I saw some who had marks of wounds on
until daylight, Columbus and his men observed them by the edge and through ignorance cut their bodies and I made signs to them asking
people on land and went ashore to claim this themselves. They have no iron. 4 what they were; and they showed me how
territory for the Spanish crown. The island in The nakedness of the Tafnos who occupied the people from other islands nearby came there
the Bahamian archipelago on which they first islands away from the Tamo heartland in His- and tried to take them, and how they
set foot was called Guanahani in the local lan- defended themselves; and I believed and
guage. Columbus renamed it San Salvador, and paniola evidently aroused great interest in believe that they come here from tierra firme
it was most probably the outlier that bears this Europe, as it is the only detail of Columbus' to take them captive. They should be good
account that appears in the illustrations in the
name today. 1 earliest printed editions of his letter to Ferdi- and intelligent servants, for I see that they
The landing was so momentous an event that say very quickly everything that is said to
1492.
Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, whose abstract of nand and Isabella in have been surprised and them; and I believe that they would become
Columbus must
Columbus' lost journal is our best source for the Christians very easily, for it seemed to me
disappointed by the utter absence
extremely
narrative of his first voyage, switched abruptly on Guanahani of the riches that Marco Polo's that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing,
from the third person to "the very words of the at the time of my departure I will take six of
to expect.
Far East had led him
Admiral in his book" to describe the meeting account of the he was clearly charmed by the them from here to Your Highnesses in order
Nevertheless
with the local inhabitants: Tamos' innocence. And yet, even at this first that they may learn to speak. 5
In order that they would be friendly to us —
because I recognized that they were people
who would be better freed [from error] and
converted to our Holy Faith by love than by
force — to some of them I gave red caps, and
glass beads which they put on their chests,
and many other things of small value, in
which they took so much pleasure and
became so much our friends that it was a
marvel But it seemed to me that they
were a people very poor in everything. 2
Columbus believed that he was greeting the
natives of an island somewhere in the vicinity of
Japan. In fact, he had encountered a people who
3
have become known as the Tamos and whose
brief recorded his'tory is intimately linked with
his exploration of the islands that were to
become known as the West Indies.
Recognizing the great importance to Ferdi-
nand and Isabella of this first contact with
the native population, Columbus recorded the
appearance and character of these "Indians"
in considerable detail:
All of them go around as naked as their
mothers bore them They are very well
formed, with handsome bodies and good
faces. Their hair [is] coarse — almost like the
tail of a horse —and short Some of them
paint themselves with black... and some of
them paint themselves with white, and some

THE AMERICAS 509